Ex-Olympic speed skating champ Shimizu to run for Diet seat from Suzuki’s party

SAPPORO – Former Olympic gold medalist Hiroyasu Shimizu will run in next month’s Lower House election on the ticket of a small opposition party, its chief said Friday.

New Party Daichi-Shinminshu will field Shimizu, a 38-year-old former speed skater, in the first constituency of Hokkaido in the Dec. 16 House of Representative elections, party chief Muneo Suzuki said at a press conference with Shimizu at his side.

Suzuki, a former Lower House member of the Liberal Democratic Party who was convicted of bribery and paroled last year, is ineligible at present to run for a Diet seat.

Shimizu won the gold medal in the 500-meter race and the bronze medal in the 1,000-meter race at the 1998 Nagano Games and the silver medal in the 500-meter event at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.